


Unpublished

by delawana



Series: Time to be Storytellers Weekly Prompts [7]
Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II
Genre: Drunken Shenanigans, Gen, Hangover, Humor, Kirkwall (Dragon Age)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-21
Updated: 2020-01-21
Packaged: 2021-02-27 05:33:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,696
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22351873
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/delawana/pseuds/delawana
Summary: There are some stories that should never see the light of day, ones that are too much even for the tastes of those readers who enjoy the Tale of the Champion or show the author in a poor light. Now, in a limited edition print run, one of the storiesexcludedfrom the original printing! Learn how the Champion and her companions pick themselves up and return to the city to recover from a wild night on the Wounded Coast.Postscriptum: please do not tell Varric Tethras of the existence of this manuscript, he believes it was destroyed.
Relationships: Anders/Female Hawke
Series: Time to be Storytellers Weekly Prompts [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1518038
Kudos: 7





	Unpublished

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: Green. Taste.

Damn eyes, never looking quite where you wanted them to, she mused to herself as she woke up, blinking a few times and rubbing vigorously at them to try to clear them. It seemed to work and the forms around her began to come into focus. She was lying on a… rock? Or a fallen tree, maybe? The crick in her neck from sleeping at an awkward angle was already vicious. In the distance she could see a shape that looked remarkably Anders-like, all feathery and golden, so at least she wasn’t out here alone.

She was freezing her tits off. Why was she so cold, anyway? Upon looking down and patting at her clothing she realized that her mental figure of speech was, in fact, quite literal, her tits rather exposed to the elements and chilled by the morning air. The rest of her seemed to be too. Whoops. What in Andraste’s everloving ass had happened?

Someone had stuffed cotton into her mouth. They must have, from how ridiculously dry it was. She licked her lips to try to restore some moisture to very little effect, instead only succeeding in leaving a woody taste on her tongue. Wood and something else that she couldn’t identify. She might have been disturbed had that not been an experience that wasn’t particularly uncommon for her. 

It all was starting to come back to her now, as she sat up and glanced toward the still propped up on a stone ledge in what she now recalled was once a Tal-Vashoth camp. The still had been full yesterday, and she was fairly certain that they hadn’t simply poured it out onto the ground. She never had been one to let perfectly serviceable alcohol go to waste, and at least now she’d satisfied her curiosity with regard to Qunari maraas-lok. The headache it left seemed as though it would need nursing for the next two days but that was neither here nor there.

She ran her hand through her hair and was sure that she must look like some wild thing, the short black strands standing on end and the rest of her naked as the day she was born. Breathing out heavily, she got up from her makeshift bed and shut her eyes for a moment to stop the camp from spinning. She spotted her pants in a bush and yanked them on with some vigour. It wasn’t that she was ashamed of her own nakedness; oh no, that was something she barely thought about; the concern was more practical as the small ants that lived in the hills along the Wounded Coast had been nipping at her something fierce despite the chill in the air. A shirt was nearby, most likely hers as well, but she didn’t much care if it wasn’t and threw it over her head. Maybe one day she’d find her boots again.

Thus attired, she poked at the figure she’d now confirmed was Anders, who muttered something nonsensical about Andraste and mages in his sleep. 

A flash of memory hit her and she chuckled. Right. Andraste and mages.

_ The magisters hurt Andraste, that’s why she was afraid of magic, but it wasn’t magic itself! How many times do I have to repeat it?” Anders kicked at the limp body in front of him, urging it to pay attention. “Are you even listening? You see Hawke?” he said, motioning towards the figure in the grass. “The Templars will never listen to us. This one won’t even look at me. I can’t convince them with reason.” _

_ “Needs more pizazz,” she remembered saying flippantly in response as she sat on the ground in front of him, “There’s no flair to it, no drama. Turn it up a notch! Where’s the humour?”  _

In her memory she was holding something up on a stick in her hand, burning it with flames from her other hand. But what was it?

She looked around the camp and noticed the corpse of a dead Tal-Vashoth in the grass nearby. Next to it lay a second corpse, this one half skinned and completely charred, with bite marks in it - a possum. Well that explained the stomach gurgles bubbling up inside her. Explained the gamey taste left in her mouth that she hadn’t been able to place before too. She probably should have been more disturbed by that discovery than she was.

Near the ashes of what looked like it had once been a bonfire sat Varric, propped up against a log. He was showing far more cleavage than usual, his shirt pulled open and exposing the quite frankly ridiculous amount of hair on his chest and snoring gently. She hadn’t realized that he snored, but then again he’d always somehow managed not to fall asleep around her. Didn’t usually drink around her either, though he generally had a drink in his hand; she’d noticed and he knew she knew, but they’d never spoken of it. Well, it seemed as though the dwarf’s resolve had fallen by the wayside. She supposed that she  _ could _ be rather persuasive when she set her mind to it.

Lying beside him, her head on the dwarf’s shoulder, was Merrill, covered in dirt and seeming rather worse for wear. Her small hand was directly on Varric’s chest, a clump of his hair clutched between her fingers. Hawke poked at the elf with her boot and she loosened her grasp, rubbing the blonde fuzz and giving it a gentle pat. 

“Oh, you’re a pretty possum, aren’t you?” Merrill mumbled, half asleep, before opening her eyes. After blinking a couple times she sprang up straight and looked up at her, her already enormous green eyes even wider. 

“Hawke? What’s going on?” she asked in confusion, clambering awkwardly upward from the ground in an attempt to get on her feet. “Did we have licorice? All I can taste is licorice.” 

Hawke bent down and lent her a hand to help her up, giving a little pat of her own to Varric’s chest hair. She’d always wondered how it felt and was satisfied to learn that it was as soft as she’d imagined. Some men oiled their beards, perhaps Varric did the same on his… lower beard.

Poor Merrill was looking rather green around the gills and had thin scratches covering much of her face. She stood unsteadily in front of her, but she  _ stood _ , which was more than could be said for the others at this point.

“Well, you seem to have lost a fight with a wolverine-” she paused as Merrill staggered away from her, “... And you’re vomiting into a bush. Is my company that offensive?”

“Oh no, Hawke!” she exclaimed upon her return, wiping her mouth. “I’m just a tiny bit under the weather this morning.”

“That’s probably an understatement. Come on, let’s get the others up and head home.”

Remembrance flashed across the elf’s face when she touched her cheeks and felt the scrapes crisscrossing over it. “I think I tried to adopt a possum?”

“Well, I’m afraid there won’t be any adopting today, it seems as though I may have rained down vengeance upon the creature.” Hawke said as she motioned toward the burnt and impaled rodent near where Anders was starting to stir.

“Oh, the poor little thing!” Merrill said mournfully. “What an awful fate for it.”

Beside them Varric had finally awoken and was rubbing at his jaw thoughtfully, a muffled “Shit,” the only identifiable word. What more was there to say anyway? She got him up on his feet and could tell that he probably had the same splitting headache that she did though he was trying his hardest to look as though he was perfectly fine.

Across the camp Anders was holding his head and staring off into space until his reflections were interrupted by a hand ruffling the hair that had escaped from its tie.

“Time to go, love, you can reflect on past lapses of judgement from home.”

“If I survive the journey,” he grumbled as she helped him to his feet. He was going to be grumpy the rest of the day, she was absolutely sure of it, and she could feel a latent anger rising from him that seemed more Justice-y than Anders-y. She might be able to stave any unpleasantness off if she whisked the man into bed and let him sleep it off.

She took one last glance around the camp before they headed out, feeling like something was missing besides her footwear. Or someone?

“Didn’t we bring Fenris along? Where  _ has _ that man gone?”

A hunt followed as they searched for their missing elf - and clothing, in Hawke’s case - that was called off when Merrill triumphantly called that she had found him, stating that he was, “In a bit of a jam.”

A jam was putting it lightly, she thought in between peals of laughter when she saw the predicament Fenris found himself in. Her raucous laughing woke him as he slept with his head on his arm beside a large tree, a tree that his hand appeared to be stuck in the middle of. He looked around, bewildered, and tried to stand until he was pulled to the ground by the imprisoned appendage. The anger and frustration on his face only served to make Hawke double over, clutching her stomach as she tried to catch her breath in between cackles.

Blue lyrium glowed, illuminating the elf as he did his thing with the spikes and freed himself. She recognized that the glare he gave her upon getting up was really quite fearsome but it was a look that Hawke completely ignored as she clapped him on the shoulder and walked past him, picking up her boots gleefully from the bush that they appeared to have been kicked into with reckless abandon.

Looking solemnly at each of the miserable members of the party Fenris said the only thing that possibly  _ could _ be said in such a situation: “We will never speak of this again.”

“I wouldn’t write it down even if I could remember half of it,” Varric said in agreement as they all shook on the matter.

**Author's Note:**

> When searching for inspiration for the prompt, a friend told me, "Write about possums." This is the result of that directive. I hope you enjoy the ride as much as I enjoyed writing it!


End file.
